What Ever Happened to the Lawsuit Brought by Weather Channel Founder Against Al Gore over Global Warming?

Remember when Weather Channel founder and global warming skeptic, John Coleman, said he and 30,000 “scientists” were going to sue Al Gore for perpetrating the “greatest scam in American history”? If not, Coleman turned a few heads last year with a barrage of op-eds, conference engagements and television appearances saying that 30,000 scientists (only 9,000 of whom actually have PhDs) wanted to sue Al Gore over the fraud.

Coleman’s arguments rest on the tired arguments that global warming is a ‘left-wing conspiracy’ made up by the UN and the environmental movement to justify a world government and a massive redistribution of wealth [yawn]. Unfortunately, Coleman’s scientific credibility is overwhelmed by his political bias.

About the Author

Timothy B. Hurst is the founder of ecopolitology and the executive editor at LiveOAK Media, a media network about the politics of energy and the environment, green business, cleantech, and green living. When not reading, writing, thinking or talking about environmental politics with anyone who will listen, Tim spends his time skiing in Colorado's high country, hiking with his dog, and getting dirty in his vegetable garden.

The fact that John Coleman plans to sue Al Gore and others ( and its about time Al "Henny Penny" Gore who has made million off false or inaccurate claims) does not mean the credibility of Mr. Colemen or other should be in question after all they are expects on the subject and Al Gore was just a Vice President who needed a platform for when he got out of office. Has anyone seen Al Gore's home and all the lights he burns nightly.

Global Warming or what ever the flavor of the month pinheads are calling it these day is a combination of many things and rather than only man made only. The earth has been warming up since it has been in existance and should by the laws of nature. More power to Mr Coleman.

http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/blog Tom Schueneman

Well put Steve… I especially like the part about how the "earth has been warming up since it has been in existance (sic) and should by the laws of nature." Science be damned I say!!!

Just to really stretch your mind a little, neither Mr. Coleman or Al Gore are "expects" (sic) in climate science.

I'll leave you with the task of actually going out and finding a climate scientist and asking him or her about climate change… What's that? You couldn't be bothered talking to a "pinhead"?

Well, neither can I. 'bye now.

John

Did you take a moment to think what you were going to write before you wrote it?

'ONLY' 9,000 have PHD's?! Is that all? That number in itself isn't substantial to you? And so what if 20,000 don't have PHD's? Have you ever heard of Nikola Tesla or Charles Darwin?

Do you realize that the United Kingdom doesn't allow the religion of Global Warming to be taught in schools?

If Gore and his cronies are so sure of their 'science' why not debate their critics head on and let the public witness an academic defense of each position.

The fact that Gore and Global Warming proponents will not confront their critics is typical behavior of other scam artists. Sylvia Browne and Uri Geller also make a habit of ducking their skeptics.

Theserf

Global Warming is complete and utter garbage. Its a way to tax air, nothing more.

http://Web E. Hernandez

I agree.

Barry

"Coleman’s arguments rest on the tired arguments…" Yada, yada. So the definition of tired is that you are tired of hearing it?

How does the current scandal fit into your definition of "tired arguments."

How does the fact that Chris Jones and Michael Mann are both under investigation for possible fraud sit with your definition of "tired?"

Are you still in the boat that believes the leaked CRU emails have absolutely no effect on the hypothesis that CO2 is causing AGW? Even though the pillar of the CO2 induced AGW argument rests firmly on the premise that a measurable change in temperatures has been recorded and that the increase can be shown to be "unprecedented."

http://www.youtube.com/28318511 Kevin

Brilliant, never gets old going back over older articles. Shame on those that only look at current events, they deserve their fate.

Tim here was only stating the prefered consensus at that time, shame is that even after all the scandel, it never changed in the PTB's.

I think it is a great idea to sue Al Gore and after he is found guilty let's deport him to France!.

Joe Coleman

Now let's see, my politics are bias but Al Gore's fake science is what? Truth? Scientific fact? Al Gore has been involved in every enviromental scam that goes way back before his latest Global Warming hoax.

http://Web E. Hernandez

Even in you told the writer about the other 20,000 scientist without a PHd, it doesnt compare to what the white house did when they were handing out lab coats to the healthcare supportes to make them look like scientist. Lol. I agree with you 100% John.

http://Web Fred Lerch

Only 9000 have PHD’s? That’s not very many, is it? What kind of degree does Al the WHACK-JOB Gore have? What kind of degree does writer Tim Hurst have…elementary education???

http://Web Mark

CO2 has nothing to do with global warming now, and it never has.

“How Well Has The Media And Government Informed The Public About CO2 Levels In The Air?
Ask yourself, your friends, family and work associates if they know the answers to the following questions about Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Be sure to write your answers before looking at the following pages.
Question 1. What percentage of the atmosphere do you think is CO2?
Question 2. Have you ever seen the percentage given in any media?
Question 3. What percentage of the CO2 is man-made?
Question 4. What percentage of the man-made CO2 does Australia produce?
Question 5. Is CO2 is a pollutant?
Question 6. Have you ever seen any evidence that CO2 causes a greenhouse effect?
I have asked over 100 people these questions. Virtually everyone says they don’t know the answers so ask them to tell you what their perception is by what they have learnt from the media, the government and Green groups. Let them know there is no right or wrong answer as you are just doing a survey as to what people have perceived the answers to be from these sources.
The answers to these questions are fundamental to evaluating the global warming scare YET almost no one knows the facts. However, without this knowledge we can’t make an informed decision about whether Climate Change is natural or not.
On the following pages are respondent’s perceptions followed by the correct answers. The bulk of the respondents (over 100 to date) are educated fairly well to very well. They comprise business managers in a diversity of large and small companies, those in medical profession, accounting, law, sales, engineering as well as scientists and trades people.
2
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
Q1. What % of the air is CO2?
Respondent’s Answers: nearly all were 20% – 40%, the highest was 75% while the lowest were 10%- 2%.
The Correct Answer: CO2 is less than a mere four 100ths of 1%! As a decimal it is 0.038%. As a fraction it is 1/27th of 1%. (Measurements for CO2 vary from one source to another from 0.036%- 0.039% due to the difficulty in measuring such a small quantity and due to changes in wind direction e.g. whether the air flow is from an industrialized region or a volcanic emission etc)
Nitrogen is just over 78%, Oxygen is just under 21% and Argon is almost 1%. CO2 is a minute trace gas at 0.038%. We all learnt the composition of the air in both primary and high school but because most people don’t use science in their day to day living, they have forgotten this. Also, the vast bulk of the population have very little knowledge of science so they find it impossible to make judgements about even basic scientific issues let alone ones as complex as climate. This makes it easy for those with agendas to deceive us by using emotive statements rather than facts. For a detailed breakup of the atmosphere go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Composition
Q2. Have you seen a percentage for CO2 given in the media?
Respondent’s answers: All said ’No’.
Q3. What % of CO2 do humans produce?
Respondent’s answers ranged from as high as 100% with most estimating it to be between 75% to 25% and only four said they thought it was between 10% and 2 %.
The Correct Answer: Nature produces nearly all of it. Humans produce only 3%. As a decimal it is a miniscule 0.001% of the air. All of mankind produces only one molecule of CO2 in around every 90,000 air molecules! Yes, that’s all.
Q4. What % of man-made CO2 does Australia produce?
Respondent’s Answers ranged from 20% to 5%.
The Correct Answer is 1% of the 0.001% of man-made CO2. As a decimal it is an insignificant 0.00001% of the air. That’s one, one-hundredth thousandth of the air. That is what all the fuss is about! That’s one CO2 molecule from Australia in every 9,000,000 molecules of air. It has absolutely no affect at all.
We have been grossly misled to think there is tens of thousands of times as much CO2 as there is!
Why has such important information been withheld from the public? If the public were aware that man-made CO2 is so incredibly small there would be very little belief in a climate disaster so the media would not be able to make a bonanza from years of high sales by selling doomsday stories. Governments and Green groups would not be able to justify a carbon tax that will greatly raise the cost of everything. Major international banks and the stock market would not make massive profits out of carbon trading and many in the science community would not be getting large research grants.
Q5. Is CO2 is a pollutant?
Respondent’s Answers: All thought it was a pollutant, at least to some degree.
The Correct Answer: CO2 is a harmless, trace gas. It is as necessary for life – just as oxygen and nitrogen are. It is a natural gas that is clear, tasteless and odourless. It is in no way a pollutant.
Calling CO2 a ‘pollutant’ leads many to wrongly think of it as black, grey or white smoke. Because the media deceitfully show white or grey ‘smoke’ coming out of power station cooling towers, most think this is CO2. It is not: it’s just steam (water vapour) condensing in the air. CO2 is invisible: just breathe out and see. Look at it bubbling out of your soft drinks, beer or sparkling wine. No one considers that a pollutant – because it’s not. CO2 in its frozen state is commonly known as dry ice. It is used in camping eskys, in medical treatments and science experiments. No one considers that a pollutant either. CO2 is emitted from all plants. This ‘emission’ is not considered a pollutant even though this alone is 33 times more than man produces! Huge quantities of CO2 are dissolved naturally in the ocean and released from the warm surface. This is not considered a pollutant either.
The two large cooling towers are emitting only steam. A tiny amount of CO2 is trickling out of the thin chimney at centre. It is only barely visible due to a small quantity of smoke particles, most of which is filtered out nowadays. The media doesn’t like to show skinny CO2 chimneys emitting nothing visible because this is unimpressive and not the least bit emotive so it doesn’t make for sensationalist journalism. So they typically choose to deceive the public by showing cooling towers.
Q6. Have you seen any evidence that CO2 causes a greenhouse effect?
Respondent’s Answers: Most did not know of any definite proof. Some said they thought the melting of the Arctic and glaciers was possibly proof.
The Correct Answer: There is no proof at all. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (the IPCC) has never produced any proof. There are, however the following proofs that it can’t cause a greenhouse effect.
• It is true that CO2 can absorb heat a little faster than nitrogen and oxygen but it becomes no hotter because it cannot absorb anymore heat than there is available to the other gases. This is against the laws of thermodynamics. All gases share their heat with the other gases. Gas molecules fly around and are constantly colliding with other gas molecules so they immediately lose any excess heat to other molecules during these collisions. That’s why the air is all one temperature in any limited volume.
• Even if CO2 levels were many times higher, radiative heating physics shows that it would make virtually no difference to temperature because it has a very limited heating ability. With CO2, the more there is, the less it heats because it quickly becomes saturated. For a detailed explanation go to: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
The following facts show that even high levels of CO2 can make almost no impact on heating the atmosphere.
1. Glasshouses with high levels of CO2 – hundreds of times higher than in the air to make plants grow faster – heat up during the day to the same temperature as glasshouses with air in them. This is also true for bottles of pure CO2 compared to ones with air.
2. The planets Venus and Mars have atmospheres that are almost entirely CO2 (97%) yet they have no ‘runaway’ greenhouse heating effect. Their temperatures are stable.
3. The geological record over hundreds of millions of years has shown that CO2 has had no affect whatsoever on climate. At times, CO2 was hundreds of times higher, yet there were ice ages.
4. In recent times when Earth was considerably warmer during the Roman Warming and the Medieval Warming, the higher temperatures then were totally natural because there was no industrialization back then.
• Water vapour is 4% of the air and that‘s 100 times as much as CO2. Water vapour absorbs 33 times as much heat as CO2 making CO2’s contribution insignificant. But like CO2, water vapour also gives this heat away to air molecules by contact (conduction) and radiation, thereby making the surrounding air the same temperature.
• The Earth’s atmosphere is very thin so its heat is continually being lost to the absolute coldness of outer space (-270 C). As there is no ‘ceiling’ to the atmosphere, surface heat cannot be retained. The Sun renews warmth every day.
Over the last few years Earth has had much colder winters due to very few magnetic storms on the Sun. These four increasingly colder winters have been particularly noticeable in the northern hemisphere where most of the land is. Because of this, the Arctic has re-frozen and glaciers that were receding are now surging due to the heavy snow falls. The Arctic showed some melting around its edges from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s due to the very high level of solar storm activity at that time. But as the Sun is now entering probably 2-4 decades of low solar activity, this is expected to cause global cooling. For more detail, see the following page. 3
4
The climate has always been naturally cyclic and variable due to numerous natural drivers of which CO2 is not one. Over millions of years the climate has shown far greater changes in the geological record than we have seen over the last 200 hundred years – and there was no industrialization back then. The very minor variations we have witnessed over the last 100 years have all occurred several times even in that short period. Today’s changes in climate are common and completely natural. There are now over 50 books that provide numerous reasons why man-made global warming is false.
The Effect of the Sun on Earth’s climate
It has long been known that the Sun is by far the major driver of all weather on Earth because it is the source of all heat and energy. There is absolutely no real-world evidence that the temperature has continually risen as we were led to believe. The hottest records in the USA and Greenland were in the 1930s due to a strong solar cycle. It became cooler from 1940 to 1970. This was due to a weak solar cycle. It has again become increasingly colder since 2006 due to another weak solar cycle. The Sun’s magnetic storm activity has now moved to an extended minimum so the next 2-4 maximums are expected to be much weaker than the last few have been. By 2011 the solar cycle should have risen half way back to its 11 year maximum but it hasn’t! It’s only just started. The last time the Sun acted this way was during the Dalton Minimum from 1790 to 1830 which produced 40 years of very cold winters with subdued, wetter summers globally – just as we are expiring now. From 1450 -1750 a more intense Maunder Minimum occurred which caused the Little Ice Age. The next 2-4 solar cycles will very likely be low in solar activity causing noticeably cooler global temperatures for a few decades.
For details see: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/02/solar-cycle-24-update
and http://www.climatechangedenier.com.au/climate-change/another-dalton-minimum/
The effect of the current Solar Minimum is particularly obvious in the northern hemisphere where increasingly colder winter temperatures have caused massive snow falls disrupting transportation across Europe, Asia and the US.
Despite more than a decade of continual doomsday predictions of increasing temperatures and never-ending drought globally, the opposite has happened. There have been lower temperatures globally with greatly increased rain and snows over much of the planet since 2006. This has caused floods across most of Australia and most other counties, as seen on the TV news. This ended the global 10 year drought conditions from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s. There has been no drop in CO2 to cause this: in fact, CO2 has risen. There is no correlation between CO2 levels and climate. The reason CO2 levels have gone up a little is most likely due to the surface of the oceans warming very slightly during the later half of the century and therefore releasing a little CO2. (The oceans are currently cooling very slightly.) Mankind’s contribution to CO2 is so small it’s not measurable.
Polls on Climate Change
Polls in western countries now show that believers in man-made global warming are now in the minority with a sizable percentage of over 20% who “don’t know” if CO2 is causing any change. The obvious change to a cooler, wetter climate combined with the revelations of climate fraud shown by the Climategate emails has led to the change in public perception. Polls asking people what is the most important threat to them out of a list of 20 issues, place global warming at the bottom!
Popular beliefs are not fact
The bulk of the population of the western world believed that the 2000 Bug would destroy much of our technology on New Year’s Eve 2000 yet not one disaster occurred anywhere. We were told CFCs caused the Ozone ‘hole’ yet after billions of dollars were spent removing CFCs over 30 years, the slight depletion of Ozone at the South Pole has not changed. Scientists now think it is natural. Popular beliefs are often based on blind faith, ideology and profit rather than proven scientific evidence. History is littered with popular consensuses that were wrong.
A Carbon Tax
Taxing CO2 achieves nothing for the environment; in fact, it deprives real environmental issues from receiving funds. A carbon tax will have a disastrous impact on lower and middle income earners. Even if drastic measures were imposed equally on all countries around the world to reduce the total human CO2 contribution by as much as 30%, this would reduce total CO2 by an insignificant percentage. It would have no affect whatsoever on the climate but it would totally destroy the economies of every country and dramatically lower everyone’s living standards. Most people and politicians are making decisions emotively, not factually about a complex science they know virtually nothing about.
Gregg D Thompson
Climate Researcher
Astronomer
Environmentalist
Author of two science books
Business Manager and Director of 3 companies
Author of science magazine articles
Designer and project manager of special effects attractions
Nature photographer
Has a great interest in most sciences
Loves creating innovation in art”

Jeremy Bloom

Wow. What a remarkably long, dense, and ultimately incorrect and ignorant post.
You range here from the blatantly wrong – CO2 doesn’t create a greenhouse effect? That’s long-settled science – to the bizzarrly wrong – “If CO2 is such a small part of the air it couldn’t possibly create a problem.” I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If you really believe that, tape a plastic bag over your head and see how it works out for you. Just do it with a friend nearby to save you when that “tiny amount” of CO2 makes you unconscious.
There’s a metaphor there, somewhere…
As for the Y2K bug – the reason we didn’t have problems was because millions of dollars and millions of man-hours were spent working like hell to make sure it didn’t create a problem. If we’d listened to morons like you telling us there was nothing to worry about, everything is just fine, there WOULD have been a problem – like your bank’s computer crashing.
That’s why we didn’t listen to morons like you at the time. And why we’re not listening to you now.

http://Web AT

Um… are you retarded? Is it the same depriving oxygen from the human body and global warming? That was a failed argument you made there.

pplr

So a small change in the amount of oxygen has a big result?

Ok.

I would give a different example. To see what a small change can do when you add something as someone who doesn’t feel global warming is real take a cyanide pill.

It is just a small thing (a pill) so adding something so small to the bigger human body couldn’t change how it’s systems work.. right?

That is why adding a small amount of something can have big results (like greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere and its systems).

http://Web Daniel Tabor

So, Mr. Coleman is an “expert” and Mr. Gore isn’t? Is Mr. Coleman a CLIMATOLOGIST? Or just a meterologist. There is a difference. He’s pretty blase about telling us about carbon dioxide. Is he also an organic chemist?

No, Gore isn’t a climatologist. He’s a spokesperson and an activist, who depends on expert testimony to craft his message. Mr. Coleman apparently feels he already knows more about that, that the people in the emerging scicence of climatology. He is apparently without need to read the reports to form his conclusions, having formed them beforehand.

Having said all that, the issue of why he didn’t bring suit is ridiculous on the face of it. He can no more prove Al Gore guilty of disseminating any incorrect information as part of an attempt to commit fraud than he can prove global warming isn’t occurring. Even IF he was correct, in that climate change is not actually taking place, is not due to human activity, etc., etc., he still has no grounds to sue for fraud because someone was just plain wrong. (Although, in this particular case, Mr. Coleman is the one who obviously hadn’t a clue about what he is talking about.)

Stephen

Actually, the main reference that Gore refers to was his university professor who indoctrinated him to GW. Now, quite interestingly, that same scholar has recanted and now states quite publicly that global warming, if true, is not man made.

I find it interesting how people such as MIT Prof. Richard Lindzen (Phd, atmospheric physicist and meteorologist) and others of his high scientific regard are called fools, idiots, don’t know what they are talking about yet people such as Dr. David Suziki (a specialist in fruit flies – no more) are considered genius because they toe, if not spread, the party line.

Truth of the matter, the 200 volcanos active today produce more green house gases per day than man produces in a year. Please, do the research from credible sources.

Jeremy Bloom

Had you done YOUR research, rather than just spewing talking points, you would have learned that:
– total volcanic emission are 65 million metric tons of CO2 per year.
– human activity emits 29 or 30 gigatons of CO2 per year
– So volcanoes put out about 0.22% of present levels of human-caused emissions of CO2
(Link)

Stephen

Of course the past decade was the warmest on record. How could it not be? Fifteen years ago the world mean temperature was determined by 6000 different thermometers throughout the world. Then suddenly without announcement the number was cut to 1000 or so thermometers.

Interestingly enough, the thermometers removed included all in the Canadian North West Territories and Yukon, and all located in mountain regions or higher cold areas. Then something new was added: take readings from, for example, LA, and it becomes the extrapolated reading for most if not all of California. Next, compare temperature readings from the 6000 thermometers of, say, 1985 and compare it to the temperatures of the warm range 1000 thermometers of today and surprise, surprise, higher average temperature for the most recent decade of the 30 years of recorded records.

Simply put, for example, to prove a new miracle food supplement works you take the average weight of 100 people, large and small, and then five weeks later make the same average without including the 60 heaviest. The food supplement works as demonstrated by the numbers.

Yes, Arctic ice is melting. Odd that nothing is mentioned about the rapid increase in Antarctic ice. Does this prove anything other than the worldwide percentage of ice remains the same?

Of the 31,000 scientists, mentioned above, it was noted that only 9000 hold PhDs. Hard to believe but true, a scientist can have (oh my!) a master’s degree.

Jeremy Bloom

Yes, and I’m sure those stupid scientists never thought about it. Won’t they be embarrassed, now that a genius like you has pointed this out!

And NO, the fact that there is marginally more Antarctic ice this winter doesn’t mean there is a happy balance of ice on the planet, any more than taking all the money out of YOUR bank account and putting it in your neighbor’s bank account would just mean there was a balance of money in your neighborhood. It happens for different reasons, all related to climate, and is not going to prevent Northern Hemisphere winters from being fucked up big-time by the massive amount of additional energy that is now percolating in the arctic ocean and atmosphere, throwing off wind patterns and brewing gigantic storms.

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